Aethertide (Chapter 3)

Olivia groaned. Opening her eyes, she instantly regretted it as sunlight pierced to the very back of her skull and she slammed them closed again. Another groan and she pushed herself up onto her elbow, hearing the crunch of broken glass beneath her as she shifted to a half-sit on the ground. The sound made her try her eyes again, slowly this time. Finally adjusting to the daylight, she looked around. The glass of her shattered helmet lay all around a guilty-looking rock. The helmet had protected her, at least, but it was ruined. She carefully unscrewed the helmet’s locking ring over her head and removed the broken dome. Regarding the shattered glass halo, she groaned. Another custom-made piece that would need money to replace. She set it aside in a patch of grass and that was when realisation dawned.

The rock. The grass.

Whipping her head around, Olivia fought her way to her feet. Panic fluttered in her chest as she took in vine-wrapped trees, wild grasses and ferns all around her. She wasn’t in her laboratory. She could see no buildings beyond the trees, there was no sound of traffic or industry in the background, no dirigibles in the sky. Finally, she noticed the plants themselves. Green leaves edged with dark blue veins, tree trunks that twisted as they had grown, merging in a solid, fibrous canopy above. She realised that what she thought were individual trees was more like a vast, interconnected mushroom network. Rotating on the spot, her breath came in pants as she regarded the hillside she stood on and followed the slope down to the valley below. The trees stretched out for miles, all the way to pastel mountains from behind which an orange sun peeked, the sky painted in sunset colours.

Olivia giggled nervously.

“A fungal jungle,” she said, and suddenly needed to sit down. Her bottom hit the grass and she pressed a hand to her chest as palpitations felt like they might break right through her suit. That was when she felt the chest plate’s gauges. Detaching the plate, she laid her instruments on the grass and began to check the readings, all worry lost in the numbers.

“Aether energy spiked on activation as intended,” she muttered to herself. “The battery depleted and then recharged. Simultaneous atmospheric fluctuations as predicted — ”

Moments passed in feverish activity before she flopped onto her back to grin up at the sky.

“I was there. The aether void,” she giggled and clapped a hand over her mouth to try to hold it in. But the excitement welled up and, with eyes squeezed closed, Olivia raised her voice in a joyous scream. “It worked!”

She laid on the grass to think, to soak in the numbers, to bask for a moment in the fading sunshine and success and relief. She had passed into the aether void. But the overzealous power output of her single shot at the experiment had pushed her too far and stopped her from being snapped back home.

Her smile faded.

The battery was charged. That was good. But her helmet was broken so the suit was useless. She looked out across the jungle to where the sun dipped toward the mountain’s shoulder. It would be dark soon, wherever she was.

She felt the rumble before she heard it; a shake that repeated seconds later, and then again, growing stronger, faster. Olivia scanned the weird treeline, the shuddering canopy, the shaking grass.

A creature hurtled out of the jungle toward her, a small white-furred rodent with a long, naked, feather-tipped tail that trailed behind it. Paying her no mind, it darted between her feet and away down the hill. She laughed.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re just seismic tremors,” she said to the creature although it had already run on. “See? They’ve already stopped.”

Olivia scrunched her nose at the odd bird-rodent as it scampered away. It was like nothing she recognised from recent biological indices. Her mind wandered to speculation. She was clearly somewhere in the world that remained undiscovered.

“The seismic disturbance should narrow down the options of where I could be…”

The words jammed in her throat as tremors shook the ground once more, so violent that she had to fight to stay on her feet. The whole treeline shook, their fungal boughs groaning. Olivia’s jaw slackened, eyes growing wide as she stepped back away from the treeline.

Stomping out of the jungle, its body bloated and covered with scales that spread into feathers at the rump, the creature stood two storeys tall, taller still when its long neck reached up toward the sky and it cracked open its incisor-rimmed beak to let out a hellish roar that made bells ring in Olivia’s ears. The creature scanned the area, its heavy head leading a thick neck in wide swoops until it caught Olivia in one giant, bloodshot eye.

“Well that’s not ideal,” Olivia said and ran.